Watch Northwestern's basketball coach surprise a walk-on with a scholarship

Watch Northwestern's basketball coach surprise a walk-on with a scholarship

It’s rare to get an NCAA story that gives you the warm and fuzzies, but we got one out of Northwestern this week, when a walk-on was given a scholarship for his final season with the team.

James Montgomery III is a walk-on senior on the Wildcats basketball team. He hasn’t played all that much — he’s scored 17 points for the team in two seasons — but he’s been a leader on the team and done great work in the classroom. The 6’4″ guard is majoring in mechanical engineering at Northwestern, which from what I understand is not an easy thing to do on top of being a Division-1 athlete.

To reward Montgomery for all he’s given to the team, head coach Chris Collins presented him with a scholarship in front of the entire team. It’s an awesome moment.

Even more awesome is when Montgomery calls his mom after practice and she screams over the speakerphone and then starts crying.

Now, before we all just fall over from getting smacked right in the feels, it’s important to remember that there’s plenty of cause for cynicism here. The fact that Northwestern filmed this makes it seem like it’s as much a piece of recruiting material than just a nice thing they did for a young man.

Vanderbilt did something similar in 2012 when head coach James Franklin offered a scholarship to walk-on Marc Panu. They also filmed it and released the video to the public. (It’s also a great video.)

So yes, there will be cynicism. But even if these scholarships were partially given to create recruiting material, who cares? Two deserving young men got scholarships to attend school and compete for their teams.

We can pick apart the schools’ motives for releasing these videos, but for now let’s just celebrate James Montgomery III and Marc Panu. They’ve done nothing but earn our praise.

Watch Northwestern's basketball coach surprise a walk-on with a scholarship

James Montgomery III, a senior guard, found out in front of the entire team.

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